Social Housing Grants

Anne McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government when she expects to allow councils to apply for social housing grants;

Austin Mitchell: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many councils have applied for funding to buy vacant properties for local housing purposes in the last six months; and whether funding has been made available to local authorities on the same basis as to registered social landlords.

Iain Wright: I refer the hon. Member to our 2 September 2008 statement on the package of measures responding to housing market conditions which confirmed that the social housing grant would be opened up to all stock-owning local authorities as well as local authorities with arms length management organisations. We are working with the Housing Corporation on the practicalities and the timetable for delivering this. No local authorities have applied for funding so far.
	We have also introduced other measures to create incentives for councils to build and acquire new homes. S313 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 provides that councils can keep the full rental income from new council homes (including newly built and newly acquired properties). We also intend to make changes to the capital regulations, in order to allow councils to keep the full receipts from new council homes. We expect to consult shortly on the use of S313 power and the capital receipts regulations which aim to enable councils to benefit in full from rental income or sales receipts from properties that have been built or acquired since this planned change to these rules.